Newspaper online ads up — NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online advertising spending at U.S. newspapers rose 21 percent in the third quarter but failed to offset a print ad spending decline, according to a study released Tuesday. — While ad spending on newspaper Web sites rose to $773 million …

Google Maps Should Push The Wikipedia Analogy Further — Google comes out with a seemingly unending stream of little enhancements to its stable of excellent online properties. One of the more exciting additions to come along in a while is the fact that users of Google Maps will now be able to move the markers on Google Maps.

The Google Set-Top Box (Think Android For TV) — Deep in the Googleplex there is an engineering team thinking about how to extend Google's reach into your TV. Its work goes way beyond the Google TV ads currently being tested by EchoStar (and targeted with help from Nielsen).

Verizon's new Samsung FlipShot — Heads up everyone, Samsung has announced another new cell phone. I know that a shocker, it's not as if the company has announced any other new models in this short holiday week, but try to contain your your surprise. The new Samsung Flipshot, aka the SCH-U900 …

The Blogosphere Needs A Vacation — What's the top news story on TechMeme this fine Tuesday afternoon? — It's a story about the sudden disappearance of the word "is" from Facebook's status message yesterday. Then, today, it reappeared. For a brief period of time …

Google serves up surprise password cracking function — A Cambridge University researcher successfully used Google to unearth a password used by an attacker to compromise its security blog. — The attacker created an account in Wordpress when he attacked the Light the Blue Touch Paper blog …

PC Software's Great Year … Chris Swenson, NPD's director of software industry analysis, described a "perfect storm of new product releases in 2007." NPD's sales figures account for in-store and online sales for 2007 through the end of October. — The revival is a remarkable turnabout from sales since the turn of the millennium.